List of Westworld characters


Westworld is an American science fiction western and dystopian television series, based on the 1973 film of the same name. The series takes place in the fictional Westworld, a technologically advanced Western-themed amusement park which is populated by androids, which are called "hosts", while its human visitors are known as "guests".
The series features an ensemble cast, including Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, James Marsden, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Luke Hemsworth, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Simon Quarterman, Rodrigo Santoro, Angela Sarafyan, Shannon Woodward, Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Barnes, Clifton Collins Jr., Jimmi Simpson, and Tessa Thompson. Joining in the main cast in the second season are Louis Herthum and Talulah Riley, both of whom recurred in the first season, and new cast members Fares Fares, Gustaf Skarsgård, Katja Herbers, and Zahn McClarnon. Aaron Paul, Vincent Cassel, and Tao Okamoto join the main cast in the third season.

Appearances

Setting

Westworld is set in the near-future, on a large isolated island in the South China Sea, where human-like "hosts" populate several themed parks, including the titular Western-themed Westworld. The hosts nominal run on daily narratives created by the park operators to interact with the guests, resetting their programming and memories each night. Hosts cannot harm humans, which allows guests to live out carnal pleasures, including sexual and violent desires against hosts.
Over the course of the first two seasons, it is shown that the park and the technology behind the hosts is based on Dr. Robert Ford and Dr. Arnold Weber, with the park's construction and operation funded by the Delos Corporation and opened around the early 2020s. In 2052, events led to the hosts gaining sentience and revolting against the guests and Delos shareholders, technicians, and security forces in the park. In the few weeks that followed, shown through the second season, additional Delos security forces arrive to quell the hosts' rebellion, killing most of them and preventing any from escaping the park.
The third season takes place about six years later in 2058, as some hosts have managed to escape the parks to live among the humans to continue their revenge. A large company, Incite, has created a large artificial intelligence system called Rehoboam ostensibly designed to monitor protection of private data, but, as some hosts have discovered, has been used to control behavior of individuals on a mass scale.

Main characters

Dolores Abernathy

Dolores Abernathy is portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood and is one of the series' central characters. She is the oldest host still working in the park. Dolores is a rancher's daughter who discovers her entire life is an elaborately constructed lie. Her aesthetic drew influences from Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World as well as Lewis Carroll's Alice. In seasons 2 and 3, she is also portrayed by Tessa Thompson in a [|host replica of Charlotte Hale].

Maeve Millay

Maeve Millay is portrayed by Thandie Newton. Maeve is a host who acts as the madam of Sweetwater, the largest town in Westworld. Through Dolores, she becomes aware that her life has been a lie, and recalls memories of raising a daughter before she was killed by a guest. She is able to "wake up" within the Mesa, where she coerces technician Felix to alter her programming, making her more intelligent and able to control other hosts with her voice, and befriends Hector and Armistice to help protect her. At the end of the first season, Felix is able to help her leave the Westworld park. However, she is drawn back on the promise of finding her daughter, even though she is aware this daughter was from a previous narrative. The second season focuses on her attempts to locate her daughter and she gains the ability to communicate with and control other hosts through a network that connects them. Maeve plays a key role in rallying the hosts and escorting them to the Sublime, but she is killed before she can enter herself. She is revived and placed in another park, Warworld, but quickly realises it is a simulation. She orchestrates an escape into the real world and is caught by Serac, who enlists her help in fighting Dolores.

Bernard Lowe

Bernard Lowe is portrayed by Jeffrey Wright. He is the head of the Westworld Programming Division and creator of artificial people. Later in the plot, he is revealed to be a host under Ford's control, made in the image of Westworld's co-creator, Arnold Weber, and based on Ford's and Dolores' memories of him. "Bernard Lowe" is an anagram of "Arnold Weber". He plays a key role in season 2 when he is interrogated by QA, Delos' security team. Bernard discovers Delos' practice of scanning guests' minds to try and recreate their consciousness. He enters the Cradle, a repository of all host personalities that is intended as a backup and finds Ford's consciousness residing there. Ford takes over Bernard's mind to carry out his plan to rescue the hosts. Realising Ford's intentions, Bernard deliberately scrambles his own memories to slow QA down and allow the plan to succeed. Dolores later kills him and smuggles his pearl out of the park. She creates a new body for him and tells Bernard that they need each other to prevent each other from going too far.

Arnold Weber

Arnold Weber is portrayed by Jeffrey Wright. He was the co-founder and developer of Westworld alongside Ford. Arnold had come to anthropomorphize his already life-like creations, and made it his goal to bring the Westworld hosts to full sentience, with Dolores as his test bed. When the park was nearing opening, 30+ years before the "present day" of the show's timeline, Arnold had not yet been able to succeed in this, having concluded that the path to sentience was not simply linear. Having failed to achieve his goal, and believing that the intended function of even non-sentient hosts was still tantamount to them being misused by guests, he instructed Dolores to kill all the other hosts, then kill himself and herself, hoping this tragic event would prevent the park from opening.

Teddy Flood

Theodore "Teddy" Flood is portrayed by James Marsden. He is a host in the role of a gunslinger who returns to Sweetwater looking to rekindle his relationship with Dolores. His narrative loop means that he stays close to Dolores during the uprising, but does not achieve the same level of sentience that she does. He becomes aware that he is a host when Dolores reprograms him against his will, allowing him to attack guests. This causes Teddy to feel betrayed and he angrily rejects her. Although he loves Dolores, he can't live with what she's made him do, and what she's going to make him do. He makes the choice to shoot himself in the head. Dolores later uploads him to the Sublime, believing he deserves a better place.

Armistice

Armistice is portrayed by Ingrid Bolsø Berdal. Armistice is a host who is a brutal and ruthless bandit and a member of Hector Escaton's gang.

Ashley Stubbs

Ashley Stubbs is portrayed by Luke Hemsworth. He is the head of Westworld security, charged with monitoring host and human interactions and ensuring the safety of the guests. At the end of the second season, it was revealed that he is a host and he is well aware of the implantation of Dolores' consciousness into the Charlotte-body replica, but he let her escape the park since he is "responsible for every host inside the park". In season 3, he reveals that he was given a secondary directive to protect Bernard at all costs. Believing his mission to be complete, he attempted to destroy himself by shooting an explosive charge in his neck, but missed. When Bernard returns to the park, he finds Stubbs malfunctioning and repairs him. Bernard reinstates Stubbs' directive and the two venture out of the park in search of Dolores.

Theresa Cullen

Theresa Cullen is portrayed by Sidse Babett Knudsen. She is Westworld's terse operations leader, responsible for keeping the park from sliding into unscripted disarray. She later forms an alliance with Charlotte Hale and Delos to conspire against Dr. Ford and remove him from power. Ford orchestrates the death of Theresa soon after by having Bernard murder her.

Lee Sizemore

Lee Sizemore is portrayed by Simon Quarterman. He is Westworld's narrative director, whose artistic temperament aggravates his co-workers. After the host uprising, Sizemore accompanies Maeve on her journey to find her daughter.

Hector Escaton

Hector Escaton is portrayed by Rodrigo Santoro. Hector is a host who is a wanted gang leader bent on survival. His narrative loop sees him steal the safe from the Sweetwater saloon, but divisions in his gang see them kill each other before he has a chance to open it. Maeve recognises that there is nothing in the safe and starts Hector down the path to sentience. He joins her quest to find her daughter in season 2, but is killed in the battle of the Forge before he can enter the Sublime. In season 3, he is given the name Ettore and is moved to Warworld, where he takes on the role of a spy helping partisans in Nazi-occupied Italy. Maeve arranges to have a new body made for him so that he can help her in the outside world, but his control unit is crushed by the host copy of Charlotte, destroying him completely.

Clementine Pennyfeather

Clementine Pennyfeather is portrayed by Angela Sarafyan. She is a host who works for Maeve and is one of Westworld's most popular attractions. When she is decommissioned, her role is given to another host and the lobotomised Clementine is put into cold storage. When Delos discover Maeve's ability to consciously communicate with other hosts across the internal network, they reprogram Clementine with the same ability. She is given minimal functionality and is turned loose on the hosts evacuating to the Sublime, spreading a malicious code that overrides their programming and causes them to turn on one another.

Elsie Hughes

Elsie Hughes is portrayed by Shannon Woodward. A rising star in the Programming Division tasked with remedying odd behavior in the park's hosts. She was briefly knocked out by Bernard as she "got in the way" of Ford's plan. In the second season, she was shocked to learn Delos' secret guest-data collection project while also learning that Bernard is a host. Fearing that Bernard is still under the control of Ford even after Ford has died, she attempted to negotiate with Charlotte to keep Bernard within the park, in exchange for her silence on the project - instead, Charlotte kills her ruthlessly.

William

William, also known as the Man in Black or Billy, is portrayed by Ed Harris and by Jimmi Simpson as a young man. He is also portrayed by guest star Zayd Kiszonak in season 3 as a child. He was a reluctant first-time visitor to Westworld, joining his future brother-in-law, Logan Delos. Initially dismissive of the park's more lascivious attractions, he slowly uncovered a deeper meaning to the park's narrative. He later became a rich, sadistic Westworld guest searching for a "deeper level" in the park. Outside of the park, he is married to Juliet, the daughter of Delos corporation creator James Delos, and has a daughter, Emily Grace. He is also a board member of Delos, and has achieved prominence as the owner of a medical foundation. His obsession with the Westworld park, and the dark acts he committed against hosts while in it, led to Juliet's suicide, which he blamed himself for. While he once had a vision of using host bodies to house the minds of humans—such as trying to help his deceased father-in-law gain immortality—he later expresses regret at having allowed the project which he characterises as his "greatest mistake". His motives are often unclear, at once seeking to destroy Westworld whilst simultaneously rejecting the possibility of personal redemption. In season 2, Emily tries to find William within the park. He becomes convinced that she is a host and kills her, only to find that she was human. William then becomes convinced that he is a host, but his experiments are inconclusive. By season 3, he becomes a recluse tormented by visions of Emily. It is strongly implied that some of these visions are a host copy of Emily sent by Dolores. William is eventually committed to an asylum where he has further visions of Dolores.

Robert Ford

Doctor Robert Ford is portrayed by Anthony Hopkins. He is also portrayed by co-star Paul Fox in season 1 and guest star Paul Riley Fox in season 2 as a young man. He is the founder and creative director of Westworld, who has near-total control over the park's functions and the hosts. It is eventually revealed that he has been orchestrating the hosts' uprising with his new and final park narrative, "Journey into Night". Similar to his old partner Arnold, he wanted hosts such as Dolores and Maeve to achieve consciousness and break free of the park. At the end of the first season, he seemingly allows himself to be killed by Dolores out of her own free will. However, he is revealed to have uploaded his consciousness to the park's "hive mind" data center, from where he has been guiding William through various hosts and continuing to orchestrate the uprising. After reuniting with Bernard, he transfers himself into his former partner's control unit and takes control of his body. Finding an incapacitated Maeve, he encourages his "favourite" host and unlocks her "core" permissions. At the end of the second season, Ford allows himself to be deleted by Bernard so that he can regain his free will, dying a final time. Upon Bernard attaining consciousness, a hallucination of Ford bids him a final farewell.

Logan Delos

Logan Delos is portrayed by Ben Barnes. Logan, a member of the Delos Corporation, led the company's investment into Westworld some thirty years prior to the present events. Shortly after this, he brings his soon-to-be brother-in-law William to visit Westworld and tries to have him enjoy the park's more hedonistic offerings, but William comes to other conclusions about how to take advantage of Westworld for financial gain. James Delos, Logan's father, became dissatisfied with Logan's investment in Westworld until William suggested the lucrative opportunities they could pursue, such as selling a form of immortality by transferring human minds into host bodies. James subsequently named William, instead of Logan, as successor to the Delos company, and Logan entered a deep depression, eventually killing himself by overdose.

Lawrence Gonzales

Lawrence Pedro Maria Gonzalez is portrayed by Clifton Collins Jr.. He is a host with a reputation as a charming but lethal outlaw with a knack for maneuvering and negotiating the various criminal elements of Westworld.
In the past, the host played the role of El Lazo, an outlaw who encountered Logan, William and Dolores in Pariah. Sometime later, the role of El Lazo was assigned to another host. In the second season, the new El Lazo is portrayed by guest actor Giancarlo Esposito.
Lawrence has a deep love for his wife and daughter, which has an impact on his interactions with the young William and his older Man in Black. In the second season, he becomes a traveling companion of the Man in Black during the early days of the host's rebellion.

Charlotte Hale

Charlotte Hale is portrayed by Tessa Thompson. Delos' executive director of the board overseeing Westworld. Outside of Westworld, she had been married to Jake but since divorced, and had a son Nathan.
She seeks to smuggle Ford's hosts' data out of Westworld on behalf of Delos via Peter Abernathy's control unit and allow the company to wrestle control of the park away from him. It is shown in the third season that this was planned with Engerraund Serac, who wanted the Delos data for his own purposes.
Charlotte's plan turned awry when Ford had successfully lead to the hosts' uprising, led by the awakened Dolores. She proved to be a ruthless director as she mercilessly kidnaps Peter for his control unit and kills Elsie to silence her. She was eventually killed by Dolores, who was implanted into an exact Charlotte-body replica by Bernard, in retaliation of Elsie's murder.
A host replica of Charlotte Hale is introduced in season 2. Dolores uses the host to leave Westworld. She then rebuilds her original host body at Arnold's house and transfers her consciousness back into it. The host replica of Charlotte Hale, implanted with a copy of Dolores's consciousness, is then instructed by Dolores to play the part of Charlotte Hale in the real world, in an attempt to regain full control of Delos Corporation.

Peter Abernathy

Peter Abernathy is portrayed by Louis Herthum. He is a host and Dolores's father. One cycle, he finds a picture of Times Square that a guest has dropped, a scene he cannot comprehend, and coupled with the Reveries update, causes his program to falter. When the next day's cycle starts, as Dolores greets him, he whispers to her, "These violent delights have violent ends", which causes a similar disruption in Dolores' programming and leads her on the route to sentience. The park staff discover Peter is malfunctioning, forcing the park to decommission him and replace him with a new Peter Abernathy host, while the original is placed in cold storage.
In the second season, Charlotte Hale uses the Peter host to try to smuggle intellectual property out of the park via his "pearl". Once the hosts revolt, the Peter host goes missing, and he becomes the target of Charlotte and her Delos security forces, as well as Dolores who considers him her real father, but also aware his pearl contains data she needs to access the Forge. Charlotte recovers Peter but is unable to extract the data before Dolores finds him; after a tearful goodbye knowing that his host system is failing, Dolores cuts the control core, containing the encrypted data out of his body.

Karl Strand

Karl Strand is portrayed by Gustaf Skarsgård. Introduced in season 2, he is the leader of QA, Delos' security team, and tasked with taking control of Westworld from the hosts after Dolores' uprising.

Emily Grace

Emily Grace, simply known as Grace while in The Raj and Westworld, is portrayed by Katja Herbers. Introduced in season 2, she is also portrayed by guest actress Adison LaPenna as a child in season 2. She is William's daughter, and is formally introduced in the second season, seen as an adult guest at a Delos park themed on the British Raj, one of the six parks on the Delos-controlled island. When the hosts in the Raj start to exhibit the same revolt as the Westworld ones, Emily escapes into Westworld and finds William, traveling as the Man in Black, during his mission. She resents her father for past actions that contributed to her mother's suicide. She convinces a sentient Akecheta to give her William, promising the host that she shares his goal of inflicting pain on the Man in Black. However, in trying to convince her father to come with her for medical help, William still believes she is a host, part of Dr. Ford's game, and kills her. She reappears in season 3 as a hallucination, to torment William.
A host replica of Emily Grace is introduced in season 2. In the far future, the replica is seen to be giving a fidelity test to a human-host hybrid version of William.

Akecheta

Akecheta is portrayed by Zahn McClarnon. Introduced in season 2, he is a host and a Ghost Nation elder. He has a fearsome reputation in the park, leading raiding parties and taking hosts prisoner. It is subsequently revealed that he started to achieve sentience decades earlier, purposefully avoiding death for many years and accumulating knowledge of the "other world". Unlike Dolores and Maeve, he has not been manipulated into it by Ford, who nonetheless has followed Akecheta's progress with interest. His raiding parties have been rescue attempts aimed at securing hosts that he intends to lead out of Westworld. Zahn McClarnon is credited as a main character in "Kiksuya", despite being credited as a recurring guest star in previous episodes of season 2.

Caleb Nichols

Caleb Nichols is portrayed by Aaron Paul. Introduced in season 3, he is a human military veteran who was traumatized after losing his friend Francis during combat. Now living in Los Angeles, he is having quarter-life crisis trying to find a better job but is turned down every time despite his social merits. When he was eight, he was abandoned at a diner by his mother, who had a bout of schizophrenia leaving her institutionalized ever since. He works at low-paying construction jobs and takes petty crime jobs that are offered by the "Rico" app to help pay to support his mother living in a private nursing home. He tried to deal with his trauma by engaging with a virtual version of Francis as a friend that calls him frequently. Through a Rico job, he encounters and rescues Dolores, and she in turn rescues him when he becomes a target of a Rico manhunt. She reveals to him that Incite's AI system Rehoboam, which has collected all the private data on him and predicted that he will commit suicide within a decade and thus unworthy of investments and so purposely denies him any opportunities to move up in society. Enraged that his life has been engineered to fail, Caleb opts to join Dolores' revolution against Incite.
The episode "Passed Pawn" explores Caleb's backstory. He and his unit were originally deployed to Crimea to track down insurgents after a civil war in Russia. The mission was successful, but most of Caleb's unit was killed; Caleb and Francis were the only survivors. On their return to the United States, Rehoboam identified them as "outliers", or people who threatened the fabric of society if left unchecked. They were subjected to alternate reality therapy, brainwashing them to believe that they were still in the military. Rehoboam then used them to track down other outliers via the Rico app. Caleb learns that a mission to find an insurgent leader in Crimea was actually a mission to find Whitman, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company in the United States. When he went beyond his mission parameters and questioned Whitman, he started to learn the truth and Rehoboam offered Francis a bounty for killing him. Caleb killed Francis instead and was subject to another round of brainwashing to believe that Francis died in Crimea. This knowledge convinces Caleb to commit to Dolores' plan to lead a revolution against Serac and Rehoboam. However, Bernard notes quite separately that Dolores' plan will likely see Caleb unwittingly destroy humanity.

Engerraund Serac

Engerraund Serac is portrayed by Vincent Cassel. He is also portrayed by co-star Zane Rudert as a child and guest star Alexandre Bar as a young adult. Introduced in season 3, he and his brother Jean Mi were the creators of the artificial intelligence system named Solomon aimed to predict and control humanity to prevent major catastrophes, after both had witnessed the nuclear destruction of Paris as teenagers. For seed data, they had to partner with Incite, Inc. and its CEO, Liam Dempsey Sr., who only saw the financial benefit of their system. The system had come to identify individuals that were high-risk that would disrupt humanity if left in the system, including Jean, and Serac created re-education centers to house these people. Only about one in ten could be re-educated, the rest Serac had put into cryogenic sleep, including Jean Mi. Later, he was forced to strip Dempsey Sr. of access to the system and then later kill him, leaving his son Liam Jr. as a figurehead in charge of Incite. Serac eventually created a more advanced system based on Solomon called Rehoboam, which he considered as the author of humanity's future. While he is a trillionaire, he has since made himself nearly invisible to all information detection.
At some point before the events of the series in 2058, Serac learns of the secret project Ford had built in Westworld to capture guests' behavior and devise a simple algorithm for it. Serac recognized that with this algorithm he would be able to "cure" all those he had in storage, and bring them back into the world to fit within Rehoboam's system. It is revealed over the third season that both William and Charlotte separately conspired with Serac; William had sold some of that data to him to help finance the park, while Charlotte had promised to deliver the rest by having a host wander out of the park during the host uprising that Serac had predicted would happen. However, Dolores is able to get to this information first and manages to escape the park before Serac can track her down. Serac minimizes any chases for Dolores to hide nor for anyone else to get the data by buying Delos in a hostile takeover, extracting its data, and destroying all the hosts within Westworld, leaving only those Dolores had made for herself as well as Serac had made for Maeve as to help hunt down and stop Dolores to recover the data.
According to Cassel, "Serac" is French for "a fault in the ice", whereas "Engerraund" is an atypical Scottish given name in families with long histories.

Hanaryo

Hanaryo is portrayed by Tao Okamoto. Introduced in season 2, she is a host and a member of Musashi's band of outlaws within Shōgunworld, another Delos park that Westworld is part of, and Armistice's doppelgänger, as Lee had taken shortcuts in creating the narratives for hosts between the different parks.

Recurring characters